Blake Griffin Travels Back In Time During Latest Ad Campaign For Kia Motors

Clippers F Blake Griffin is featured in a series of five 30-second commercials for Kia Motors' latest TV ad campaign that depict Griffin during various years. The first two spots -- titled "Free Throw" (circa '95) and "Football" (circa '97) -- began running yesterday, while the remaining three spots are scheduled to roll out throughout the NBA season. The campaign was created by Kia's agency of record, David&Goliath. In addition to the TV spots, Griffin will have a presence on all Kia social and digital platforms including Facebook, YouTube and Kia.com (NBA). In N.Y., Stuart Elliott noted Griffin in the campaign "drives a Kia Optima sedan as if it were a time machine." The spots feature Griffin "using the Uvo voice-activated entertainment and information system inside his Kia Optima to send him back to different years from 1995 to the early 2000s." In each commercial Griffin "meets a young actor playing a younger version of himself." For the first spot, Griffin "asks to go back to 1995 and Uvo summons up the song 'This Is How We Do It' from that year." He meets up with a "version of himself who, based on his birth date in 1989, is about 6 years old." Kia Motors America Exec VP/Marketing & Communications Michael Sprague said that Griffin's family "provided images of him as a child to make it easier to cast the children in the commercials." Kia also announced it would "return as a Super Bowl sponsor, buying time during Super Bowl XLVII on Feb. 3, 2013." While Sprague "declined to talk about what the Super Bowl spot will be about, he did rule out a couple of possibilities." He said that it "will not be a commercial featuring Mr. Griffin ... nor, as of now, will it be a spot with the popular hip-hop hamster characters for the Kia Soul" (NYTIMES.com, 10/29).